In my book Confusion in the Kingdom I document how lots of liberal Catholics refuse to speak frankly about sexual sin and often use ambiguous language to give the impression that sins like sodomy really aren’t so bad. But these same people often have no problem clearly denouncing sins that are not celebrated among their political tribe.
So, for example, Fr. James Martin will say that the Bible has unclear “clobber passages” against homosexuality, but then say the Bible is “clear” on the complex issue of immigration. Or consider this article Alice Camille wrote in 2022 titled “Sometimes hate is the friendly man next door”.
She talks about “Bill,” an EMT who seemed to be a stand-up guy and was about to be received into the Church. Bill then, of his own free will, sent Camille articles he wrote that she considered racist. She writes, “It seemed our ‘model’ parishioner-to-be was a card-carrying Neo-Nazi racist.”
She said Bill was uneasy about his identity and so she “urged Bill to denounce [his writings] and put them behind him. I urged him not to approach the Easter mysteries until he had expunged the way of hate from his life.” The article then says she met him years later and she recounts the experience:
I didn’t see or hear from Bill for five years. Then I accidentally ran into him on the street one day. He saw me first and called to me. From a safe 10 paces away, he told me he’d burned all of his hate paraphernalia: books, magazines, flags, and keepsakes. He said he’d changed. He said it was over. I wanted to believe him and promised him my continued prayers. But I was too afraid to get closer and made no attempt to contact him again.
Camille is also the author of an article titled “Even God got bored with the binary.” The subtitle reads: “Dualisms—whether black and white, male and female, or good and evil—are appealing, but often fail to tell the whole story. ”
And yet for Camille, there is no dualism when it comes to racism. It is evil. Period. And, even worse, racism is an unforgivable sin. Even though this man repented of his racism, he still needed to be treated like a leper.
Let’s change the story and imagine “Bill” was a transgender woman (i.e. a man claiming to be a woman), who engaged in acts of sodomy. I doubt liberal Catholics would denounce his behavior and tell him to put his past behind him (or even address him as “him”). Let’s imagine further that Bill had written articles saying it was okay to kill so-called transphobes but then repented of this hatred.
Bill would be hailed as a hero whose hatred was “of course” wrong but understandable given how traumatic “transphobes” can be. Liberal Catholics certainly wouldn’t treat transgender Bill like an unredeemable monster as they might treat racist Bill, even though a transgender person could also commit an act of violence.
So, when I see a Catholic effusively praising the LGBT movement without offering even a hint of a call to repentance, I ask that person two simple questions:
- Are acts of racism wicked?
- Are acts of sodomy wicked?
They almost always refuse to answer the second question because for many of them, deep down, they don’t think sodomy is sinful. I then ask why they can quickly denounce one sinful act but not another. These same questions also work for “far right” Catholics who may see nothing wrong with racism. As a Catholic, you should be able to easily answer “yes” to both questions; if you don’t, then I question your commitment to Catholic teaching.
As Christians, we should not let our politics cloud our witness of the Gospel. Jesus said that we must repent and believe in the Gospel; that means repenting not just of the sins of “the other side” we snipe about online, but also of the sins that may be common among our own political tribe that have no place among the people of God whose citizenship is in heaven (Phil 3:20).